


Needs Of The One

by tielan



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Torture, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-26
Updated: 2011-08-26
Packaged: 2017-10-23 01:56:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logic be damned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Needs Of The One

**Author's Note:**

> For the 'first scene meme', where **greenconverses** gave me 'Spock/Uhura, Logic be damned.'

Logic be damned.

In the silence following Lieutenant Sabra's halting and painstaking translation of the Sandson leader's statement - a translation that Nyota would have performed with perfect fluidity - Spock came to a decision.

The needs of the many might outweigh the needs of the one, but all his vaunted Vulcan logic could not make him watch her die before his eyes.

However, even as he stood, Kirk was rising from his chair, ordering Sulu to hold course. The captain was a bare step behind Spock as he walked off the bridge and out into the corridor.

There was no attempt to dissuade from either side, no questions asked, no protests made. Logic did not motivate James Kirk, neither did public humiliation. Spock must choose his battleground wisely when fighting his captain - the man was reckless, yes, but cunning, too. He waited until the transporter doors had closed around both of them, standing side by side in pristine silence. "You will be no use to the Enterprise dead, Jim."

"You're skipping a link in the chain there, Spock. If you think I'm going to my death, then you must think you're going to your death. And you've never struck me as the kind of guy who'd go in half-cocked and with a death wish."

"Unlike some others?"

"Cutting attempt at sarcasm gets you points. But don't divert from the argument."

"There is no argument to be had. I will not stand aside and watch her die." His mother had fallen, even as the transporter signal failed to capture her person. He had reached out to insubstantial flesh and grasped only loss; he would not do it again. Nothing he could have done would have saved his mother; this was not the same.

"Glad we've got that straight, because I'm not about to watch Uhura be tortured and executed either. And only part of that's because she still owes me five hundred credits from our last card night." Kirk tilted his head with that smirky look he got when he either had the upper hand, or figured he wasn't going to be challenged for it. "And you wouldn't be doing this if you didn't have an idea at hand - the whole not-a-death-wish-kind-of-guy thing. So, what's your a plan?"

\--

Nyota stared into the green-flecked eyes of a madman, and forced herself to breathe through the terror and the pain.

Whoever had taught this man his craft had taught him well. She could have wished them to the nether regions of a fictional hell, but there was no denying that he was a master of human physiology - its capabilities and its limits. And, like any master dedicated to his work, he revelled in his skill in peeling back the layers of sensation the human body could take - the pain he could inflict with a grip here, a twist there - all of it without ever breaking the skin.

"And just here," he murmured, so soft that her ears could barely make out the syllables. And even as her mind translated the words from his native tongue, she felt the burn begin in her shoulders, and clenched her teeth fiercely around the pain that spread, cancerous, through her limbs.

She would not think of Spock now, most not think of him now when her shoulders were afire, when her back was screaming at her with twitching tingles. She must not think of him, or risk giving in to unthinking fear and useless panic.

His logic would rule him, she thought dimly, as agony burned new channels through her senses. He would know the loss of one woman wasn't worth the lives of the Enterprise - from his own, to Kirk's, to the many friends and companions who served with them in the Federation Fleet.

Even if that woman was her.


End file.
